What's on Your Mind?

TikTok is a one-stop-shop for recipe inspo, viral dance trends, tin-foil-hat conspiracies, and, increasingly, political commentary. Now, it’s also where one in five Americans are getting their news. That’s according to a Pew Research Center analysis published last week, which has tracked a dramatic uptick in news consumption on the platform, up from just 3% in 2020. “During that span, no social media platform we’ve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption,” Pew noted. In Pew’s survey, 43% of adults under 30 said they regularly get their news on TikTok, up from 9% five years ago. But it’s not just younger people. A quarter of adults between the …

Berkshire Hathaway is buying Occidental Petroleum’s chemical division for $9.7 billion in what may be the last big acquisition involving the consummate dealmaker, Warren Buffett. Buffett wasn’t mentioned anywhere in materials released by Berkshire Hathaway discussing the deal Thursday, potentially signaling a passing of the torch to Vice Chair Greg Abel, to whom Buffet will hand the CEO title in January. Buffett will remain chairman at Berkshire and will still be involved in deciding how to spend the conglomerate’s colossal pile of more than $344 billion in cash. Berkshire’s cash reserves have been growing for years because Buffett has been unable to find any …

Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, is here. And this might be Swift’s biggest release yet, given that along with an album, she’s also premiering a film on the same day. Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl features a new music video for the album’s single “The Fate of Ophelia,” lyric videos, and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and commentary. It’s being hosted as a companion event by AMC, Cinemark Theaters, and Regal Cinemas. The catch? It’s showing in theaters for just three days: October 3 to 5. The brief theatrical window follows the same pattern Swift has used to release limited-edition versio…

Last month, more than 450 artists designed a custom sticker to support Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign—and, pretty soon, you’re going to be seeing the winning design everywhere. On September 25, Mamdani’s campaign announced through an Instagram video that it would be hosting a sticker design contest to get New Yorkers registered to vote before the October 25 deadline. The competition gave followers just 36 hours to submit their designs, during which hundreds of pieces of art flooded the campaigns’ submission portal. Now that a winner has been selected, anyone who is registered can submit a form on Mamdani’s website and pick up the sticker at one of Mam…

With foot traffic down and Target’s stock still slumping, Taylor Swift’s new album release might be the shot in the arm the retailer needs. Target may be in the crosshairs of the culture wars, but the brand’s relationship with Taylor Swift still stands in 2025. The release of “The Life of a Showgirl” again brings a suite of special editions to Target as exclusives, luring Swifties to spread their cash around to pick up their favorite variants. But between the retailer’s faltering reputation and a smorgasbord of album options, will Swifties take their business elsewhere? Target’s very bad 2025 In January, Target announced that it would abandon longstanding init…

Snapchat rankled some of its most loyal (and heavy) users when it announced last week it will begin charging for storage plans for Memories, its version of a digital archive for Snaps and stories. Even though the Santa Monica, California-based social media company promised that “nothing will change” for the vast majority of Snapchatters, who have less than 5 gigabytes (GB) of Memories, it will begin rolling out paid storage plans, at a yet undisclosed date. The company told TechCrunch that plans will range from $1.99 per month to $15.99 per month for storage plans, depending on the amount of data of Memories. The company indicated you could have thousands of Snaps…

Verizon just announced that its current CEO, Hans Vestberg, is stepping down—and the wireless carrier is pulling another seasoned leader out of retirement to take its helm. In a press release published on October 6, Verizon announced that former PayPal CEO Dan Schulman will be leading the company, effective immediately. In the meantime, Vestberg (who has held the title since 2018) will stay on as a special adviser at the company until October 4, 2026. Schulman has served on Verizon’s board of directors since 2018, and was elected lead independent director in December 2024. “Dan is a seasoned and decisive leader with a unique set of experiences, and a proven re…

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against an individual it says is a moderator on Reddit, accusing him of piracy and facilitating a network of websites that offered pirated Nintendo Switch games. The video game publisher is seeking $4.5 million in damages from James C. Williams, who went by the username “Archbox” on the social media site. (That account has since been suspended.) “Williams not only copied and distributed Nintendo game files without authorization; he actively promoted their distribution and copying to thousands of others across a variety of websites and online ‘communities,’ and knowingly trafficked in unlawful software products aimed at circumventing Ni…

For many stars, writing a children’s book is a fun side project they do to capitalize on their fame. Kate McKinnon—a Saturday Night Live alum who has starred in recent movies like Barbie and The Roses—is certainly famous. But the truth is that she had dreamed of writing a novel for middle schoolers since her mid-twenties, years before she even auditioned for SNL. As a child, McKinnon had loved books about slightly oddball characters, like those found in Roald Dahl books. Her favorite heroine was Pippi Longstocking, whom she played in a kindergarten performance. She loved the character so much that she would show up at school for years in a full-on Pippi costume, compl…

Libbie Bischoff didn’t set out to reinvent the signature. Really, she was just flipping through a vintage knitting magazine from the 1950s. The Minneapolis-based type designer collects the mags, partly because her grandmother taught her to knit, and partly because she finds incredible typography hidden within their pages. It was in one of these magazines that she found the casual, flowing script that would become one of Docusign’s new signature styles. Together with Lynne Yun—a New York-based type designer, calligrapher, and founder of the studio Space Type—Bischoff is responsible for the first major update to the platform’s signature options in more than 20 year…

In a single day, OpenAI laid out the two pillars of its next empire: first, it signed a sweeping deal with AMD to secure no less than six gigawatts of GPU compute, an agreement that could give it up to a 10% stake in AMD if certain milestones are met. Then, on stage at DevDay, it unveiled a new layer of “mini-apps” that live inside ChatGPT, turning the chatbot into something much bigger: not a product, but a platform. Together, these moves define OpenAI’s ambition with perfect clarity: control the power and control the interface. Power, literally The AMD deal is more than a supply contract: it’s a signal. Six gigawatts of GPU compute by 2026, the first one…

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Thursday that it is opening an investigation into 2.88 million Tesla vehicles equipped with its Full Self-Driving system over more than 50 reports of traffic-safety violations and a series of crashes. The auto safety agency said FSD — an assistance system that requires drivers to pay attention and intervene if needed — has “induced vehicle behavior that violated traffic safety laws.” The agency said it has reports of Tesla vehicles using FSD driving through red traffic lights and driving against the proper direction of travel during a lane change. RECALL COULD FOLLOW IF NHTSA FINDS SAFETY RISKS …

Connecting with Gen Z is crucial for brands, especially as teens and twenty-somethings gain spending power and influence. But doing so can be a bit of an art. That’s why a new crop of companies are offering “translation” services for brands that want to speak Gen Z’s language and, as they say, get “locked in.” While many Gen Z translation businesses are still in their infancy, the Wall Street Journal reported that it already represents a multi-million-dollar industry. Some analysts estimate that Gen Z’s spending power is set to grow to $12.6 trillion by 2030, up from $9.8 trillion in 2024, according to the Journal. At the same time, Gen Z is far more digitally n…

OpenAI and Broadcom have formed a multibillion-dollar partnership to develop OpenAI-designed chips. Under the deal, OpenAI will design the chips to its own specifications and Broadcom will manage the development and fabrication of the chips, as well as help with their deployment. The companies plan to deploy enough chips to require 10 gigawatts of electrical power beginning in mid-2026, and running through 2029. Broadcom stock jumped almost 10% on the announcement Monday. The deal marks the second major move by OpenAI to reduce its dependence on Nvidia, which now dominates the AI chip market—the company announced a partnership with chipmaker AMD last week. …

Every year, new productivity hacks promise to save us from burnout, inefficiency, and disconnection at work. We reorganize calendars, color-code to-do lists, and install apps that track keystrokes and hours. And yet, despite all the hacks, employees are exhausted, disengaged, and creatively stuck. What if the problem isn’t that we need more productivity tools—but that we need more play? That’s not a metaphor. I mean literal play. The kind that is open-ended, imaginative, and unconcerned with outcomes. In my decades as a play designer and educator, I’ve watched executives, engineers, and designers from companies like Google, Nike, and Lego light up when they are gi…

Households that have bought Ben’s Original rice products will want to check their pantries right away. The brand, owned by food giant Mars, has issued a voluntary recall for select rice products. At issue is the possibility of small stones mixed in the rice, which could cause intestinal and other damage if consumed. Here’s what you need to know about the Ben’s Original rice recall. What’s happened? On October 10, Ben’s Original announced a voluntary recall of some of its rice products. That recall notice was later published on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website on October 14. The voluntary recall was initiated after Ben’s Original di…

An investor group including BlackRock, Microsoft, and Nvidia is buying one of the world’s biggest data center operators with nearly 80 facilities in a deal worth $40 billion to secure coveted computing capacity for artificial intelligence. The purchase of U.S.-based Aligned Data Centers from Australian Macquarie Asset Management on Wednesday is the first deal for the AI Infrastructure Partnership formed last year which includes Abu Dhabi-based fund MGX and Elon Musk’s startup xAI among its backers. “With this investment in Aligned Data Centers, we further our goal of delivering the infrastructure necessary to power the future of AI,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink,…

If you hear your organization talking about the Great ShakeOut, it has nothing to do with Taylor Swift or Florence and the Machine. Instead, this international event promotes earthquake preparedness. Having a plan greatly improves outcomes and saves lives. On October 16 at 10:16 a.m. local time, millions will be practicing how to properly drop, cover, and hold on. Let’s take a look at the science behind earthquakes, the regions they impact, and how to participate in the Great ShakeOut. What actually causes an earthquake? The Earth’s outer layer is made up of seven major tectonic plates. Think of these as patches of a quilt that isn’t stitched together per…

Senate Democrats are poised for the 10th time Thursday to reject a stopgap spending bill that would reopen the government, insisting they won’t back away from demands that Congress take up health care benefits. The repetition of votes on the funding bill has become a daily drumbeat in Congress, underscoring how intractable the situation has become as it has been at times the only item on the agenda for the Senate floor. House Republicans have left Washington altogether. The standoff has lasted over two weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, even more without a guaranteed payday and Congress essentially paralyzed. “Every day that goes by, the…

Who doesn’t love a little cinnamon sprinkled on their toast or oatmeal? Unfortunately, lovers of the spice now have more things to worry about. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded its list of ground cinnamon products to avoid over fears that they could contain elevated levels of lead. Here’s what you need to know about the latest cinnamon products the FDA is warning consumers to avoid. What’s happened? On October 10, the FDA updated its ongoing list of ground cinnamon products that consumers should avoid due to fears that the products may contain elevated levels of lead, which could be harmful. The most recent updates to the list of products…